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Everything comes back after 20 years: The Prog's New Dark Age

Started by The Enigmatic Dr X, 13 February, 2018, 09:58:53 AM

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dweezil2

I still enjoy my weekly dose of thrillpower and would be bereft without it quite honestly, so you'll hear very few complaints from me.
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The Adventurer

Is the current Prog line up as good as it was the same time in 2007 or 2008? Not really. Is it as bad as at any point in the late 90s? Hell no.

THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

Greg M.

Personally, I find the 90s superior to the current state of play. I'm not saying there weren't atrocious lows in the 90s, but there were some real highs too. (Yes, many of them were by John Smith.) The modern prog is a consistent, competent creature, but to me, it feels much blander – there's little that's objectively bad, but little that interests me that much either. Obviously, that's subjective in the sense that it meant more to me as a teenager, and I actively engaged with even the stories I couldn't stand, whereas nowadays I'm buying through habit, and just skip large chunks of it, or at least give 'em a only casual leaf-through.

James Stacey

I'm finding Savage the most fun thing in it for all its bonkers/impossible science, and I pretty much don't like any of Mr Mills more recent output. It's odd that while the prog is in the doldrums a bit at the moment, the meg is bloody superb and firing on all thrill cylinders. After all lets not forget the Meg although it turned up occasional gems has been mostly filler for years.

Dark Jimbo

I stopped reading the prog just after the first run of the resurrected Bad Company (not entirely a coincedence, it must be said!) I haven't missed it nearly as much as I thought I would, and there's been very little I feel I've missed out on.

But as bad as the 90s?! Clearly not! Just a bit bland, lacking the manic energy of an Al Ewing or the like, and a bit too reliant on the same ol' stuff - whereas the 90s was an objectively poor comic at times.
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Professor Bear

Quote from: Richard on 13 February, 2018, 01:45:34 PM
It's the internet, it's supposed to be confrontational. And I'm pretty sure that Shakira's Law was a pun, not a slip.

No, it was a typo.  I meant to type Shania Law.

Leigh S

I think the way it most resembles the 90s is the lack of Wagner. 

Pat Mills is propping up my interest (as he did then) with arguably better quality stuff than his 90s output, but at least there are no Mark Millars to really shit in the gravy

But I do take the point it is competent to a point of blandness at times and desperately needs a bit of oomph that I would have to go back as far as Al Ewing to find regularly  Edgington, Rennie and Abnett are all prefectly competent, but to a larger or lesser extent I'm rarely engaged in the week to week action of whatever strip they are doing. 

Modern Panther

It seems the audience is divided between:

a) the problem is too much Pat Mills
b) what we need here is more Pat Mills

I do think that we've hit a particularly poor patch in the last couple of months, but it wasn't that long ago that I was over the moon with Indigo Prime, Deadworld, Hope..., Absalom, The Alienist, Brink...

At the moment the only thing I can say I'm all that interested in is Brass Sun, but its glacial pace seems better suited to a collected trade than being told five pages at a time.

JamesC

Well I'm really enjoying things at the moment. People seem to be enjoying Brass Sun but it's the only strip I'm skipping - I find it totally boring. In fact I've never enjoyed anything by Edgington. I think he has great ideas but isn't a good story teller or character builder - I guess I'm missing something though and certainly don't begrudge his place in the Prog (like I did with Mark Millar's Robohunter!) I also don't quite get the love for John Smith - again, he has good ideas but more often than not his stories are just obtuse.
On the flip side I'm really enjoying both ABC Warriors and Savage. They're both OTT melodramas but they're great fun and just what I want to see in the Prog.
Dredd is fine. I'm quite enjoying the story but I find that Mike Carrol's returning characters aren't memorable. Am I supposed to know who that Sov bloke is? He doesn't seem memorable to me (to be honest, Dredd doesn't either in this particular story).
Bad Company is something I haven't quite made my mind up about. It's full of energy though and that's a good thing.
Overall things are great. I'm looking forward to seeing more Dan Abnett in the Prog again - Grey Area, Sin/Dex, Brink and Kingdom are some of my absolute favourites. Really looking forward to more Deadworld, the new Durham Red, the upcoming specials. Honestly it feels about as far away from a dark age as could be.

JayzusB.Christ

I'm glad it's not just me then... after the exhilaration of things like Day of Chaos and the final Dante (and I really hated Dante when it started) things have been winding down a bit.  I think it would be nice to pay Al Ewing a bit more to write Dredd again, the way they did with John Wagner in the 90s.  He was a godsend to Dredd, in my book, and I finally stopped worrying about John's retirement, and then he was gone again.

It's still a fair bit better than the progs of the 90s though.  For me, incidentally, what dogged them most was Ennis, not Millar - he was doing all the Dredds, in every prog, not just a few Robo-Hunters now and again, and I hated them.  He's one of my favourite comics writers nowadays, mind you, now that he's got the posturing machismo and smugness of Preacher out of his system.
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Proudhuff

I think Dr X puts forward a well argued case, and I mostly agree, add to that my dislike of Deadworld and its siblings, and I'm a pretty unhappy camper.
Still I know that there will be some GRennie loveliness along shortly, and the mighty John W is coming back, isn't he? 
DDT did a job on me

Proudhuff

DDT did a job on me

Colin YNWA

Quote from: The Adventurer on 13 February, 2018, 02:58:35 PM
Is the current Prog line up as good as it was the same time in 2007 or 2008? Not really. Is it as bad as at any point in the late 90s? Hell no.

Well almost this. I reckon the Prog hit its recent peak in 2009 when Zombo and Cradlegrave burst on the scene. If I was looking for an end to that period Mid 2012 when Dante finished.

That's peak.

I'd still say the Prog is on a high and absolutely miles ahead of the lows of the 90s. I'm a fan of the current line-up and have enjoyed a lot more than I've not since 2012. I think the only real problem the Prog has is its never really replaced Dante. Well you can never replace Dante, but the great new strips, Brink, The Order, Brass Sun (well newish!) and Kingdom (well in relation to the age of the Prog!) just don't have the frequency and Sinister Dexter doesn't seem to have Dabnett's time and attention at the moment.

Too many really good strips have say 12 episodes a year. The new talent isn't as strong as that lost to the US, again, so Rob Williams, Si Spurrier and Al Ewing haven't quite been replaced yet, but some of the new blood is showing real potential.

These are relatively minor issues overall and ever Saturday I look forward to the Prog landing and see no sign of that ending any time soon.

Quote from: Proudhuff on 13 February, 2018, 07:04:17 PM
and The Megazine is going great guns at the moment  :D

Yeah its interesting that things ebb and flow. Not that long ago, while the Prog was being hailed by and large, the Meg was apparently in the doldrums. And so it goes.

Its a shame folks aren't enjoying and if they aren't of course they should stop buying, but for me, I find that baffling!

radiator

QuoteI'm glad it's not just me then... after the exhilaration of things like Day of Chaos and the final Dante... things have been winding down a bit.

I was just writing the exact same thing. Wagner on Dredd and the final few Dante arcs were the two things really tethering me to the prog. Both of those strips were absolutely on fire between 2006 and 2012, and the two alone made the prog an essential purchase (other strips I liked, such as Kingdom, Zombo and Shakara being icing on the cake). With them (largely) gone I've pretty much totally drifted away from all things 2000ad, sad to say.

As for Mills - and I've danced around saying this for years - you can put me firmly in the 'not a fan' camp (at least not of anything he's done since maybe the 90s Khronicles of Khaos/Treasures of Britain era). Being totally honest, and it pains me to say, the fact that so much of the page count of the average prog and Meg (American Reaper lest we forget) being generally given over to his stuff is also a large part of the reason I have ended up losing interest in recent years.

Richard

I don't buy the argument that the problem is too much Pat Mills, even if you don't like his work. 60% of this week's prog isn't by him, and if you add up all the progs of last year that had his stories in them, I beg it comes to well under half.

(Plus there wouldn't have been any prog in the first place if it hadn't been for him.)

But the bottom line is that everything will peak from time to time and then not be at it's peak in between. That's not the same thing as it being the worst it's ever been.

And isn't there some more Wagner on the way soon? I think I read that sonewhere. So nil desperandum.